Sunday Night Brain Dump

So many great things have been happening at Five Stones that its just hard to pick a place to begin. This was one of the weeks as a Pastor in which God just showed me so many new truths that I have never seen before in His Word. Today I spoke on the Dark Side of Christmas and spoke of the pain, rejection, humiliation that both Mary and Joseph felt. That the rejection of Christ actually took place during the pregnancy. Here are some of my thoughts from today, so buckle your chinstrap.

• Loved the song that one of our students Abbey sang today during worship. That girl can sing, or as we say it in the south; that girl can saaang!
• Dan on the drums brought it this morning as he sang Little Drummer Boy. Love that he was willing to stretch himself.
• Thought Leslie did a great job as our service host. Ralph may have some solid competition.
• Had a gentleman stop me in the hall between services to tell me that he hasn’t looked forward to going to church like this in over 7 years. What a great complement to our team. That is a huge win.
• Experienced one of those times as a Pastor where you can just feel God’s hand upon as you speak. Those times where you realize that you are just a voice for His message.
• Can’t wait to see how many people go home and place a cross in their nativity scene.
• Somehow I lost Joseph from the nativity scene that I used as a prop this morning. I hope to find Joseph since this is my favorite nativity set. Joseph please come home we miss you.
• Really got humbled as a leader today. We did a community event in Waxhaw  and one of the things we did cost more money than we had budgeted for. To say I got a little nervous over this would be an understatement. Today a man handed one of our staff the amount needed to cover that item in cash. He even knew what it was to go towards without any of us saying a word. Thanks God for the reminder about how its your money. Also thankful for this man’s faithfulness in listening to the Lord.
• Last night Cooper learned about Santa Claus. So today he told one of our volunteers in Discover Factory that he figured out about Santa last night. The coach asked him what he was talking about, and Cooper responded, “oh nevermind, you may not know.” Too Funny!
• Proud of all of our Five Stones folks who went out to support the fundraiser for the injured police office in downtown Waxhaw. We are becoming good neighbors to our town.
• Missed having Ralph and his family with us today. Praying for his Mom’s recovery from Heart Valve replacement.
• Glad to see all of our college students home as well as the number of students in the service today.
• Personally excited that we had another family from Cooper’s former baseball team come to the service today. Want my kids see me living out what I preach. Engage Culture!
• Our Christmas Eve Service is getting a lot of talk. We’ve had over 300 people register just off of facebook. Please be inviting your friends to come and have Christmas Eve in the barn. If you are free we could also use some additional help to pull everything off. Here is the link to register for this night as well as the link to pass to your friends. If you have facebook please make this one of your status posts.
• Just heard we had our second highest attendance day since we launched. God is doing amazing things here at Five Stones. I personally feel that God is going to completely blow up Five Stones during the months of Jan.-March.
• Can’t wait to party tonight at our Worship Team Christmas Party!
• Proud to be a part of the this church!